ONT Re: Brief Lives Examined
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BLE. Note 4
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^ ^ ^ Properties, Qualities
\|/
@ Entity, Object
/|\
v v v Instances, Examples
Here is a generic picture of what I have in mind
as falling under the term "existential correlate".
NB. I am still testing how this sounds, and may
also try the alternative "ontological correlate".
The sign "@" marks a node, often called the "propositus",
corresponding to a possible entity or a potential object
of discussion in a certain kind of ontological hierarchy,
one where the objects that are related to the propositus
as its "properties" or "qualities" are incident above it
in the hierarchy, and where the objects that are related
to the propositus as its "instances" or "exemplars" are
incident below it in the hierarchy.
These incidence relations are 2-adic relations that may
initially be regarded as "free", in other words, having
no additional "relations" (in another sense of the word
"relation" that is established in algebra and not about
to change). Thus, they begin by being analogous to the
set-theoretic membership relation in its intransitivity.
However, we can always impose any relations that appear
to be demanded by the application at hand, for instance,
a "law of transitivity" that would make these relations
more analogous to the set-theoretic inclusion relation.
These are the sorts of considerations that often arise
in various kinds of applied empirical contexts, where
one is often forced to start gathering data about an
empirical relation without always knowing all of the
laws that it will be discovered to obey in due time.
Next time, I will consider the significance of this
ontological picture for the classification of signs.
Jon Awbrey
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